Learn about Palmer's extraordinary agricultural innovations, her commitment to horticultural science and livestock-raising methods, and her savvy business acumen as foundational to the development of the Sarasota we know today
When the millionaire matron of Chicago high society, Bertha Palmer, arrived in Sarasota in 1910, she encountered a mosquito-infested, boggy marshland that most assumed was uninhabitable. What the savvy businesswoman saw, however, was a tropical paradise with potential to become lucrative land for farming, ranching and leisure.